


As The Music Dies

by Killjoy013



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Azula is Broken, Character Study, F/F, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kinda, Post-Break Up, Post-Break up Haircut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27706030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killjoy013/pseuds/Killjoy013
Summary: Azula laments the relationship Ty-Lee and her had.Before she ruined it.Before she fucked it all up.The past and present blur into one big disaster.Azula just wanted to get some sleep.Angst.
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	As The Music Dies

**Author's Note:**

> haha don't project on a character about a bad breakup you had that happened months ago and you're still not over, you're so sexy haha
> 
> ANYWAYS
> 
> I hope you like it.

_Time can never mend_

_The careless whisper of a good friend_

_To the heart and mind_

_If your answer's kind_

_There's no comfort in the truth_

_Pain is all you'll find_

* * *

  
  


Azula stares up at her ceiling hearing the nightlife happen outside her window. Car lights flash in and out through the glass and into her room. Her bed is cold. Too big. Her room is so...empty. She can't sleep. 

Azula reaches for someone who isn’t there. 

She closes her eyes and she can almost feel the phantom hand caressing her cheek. 

"Go to sleep, dummy." The wind whispers. 

It even sounds like _her_. 

It’s all too much. Pink laughter is still ringing in her ears. 

Can you be haunted by someone still living? 

Azula sighs and sits up, her hair falling like a curtain. 

(Ty-lee's hands are nimble and fast as they braid Azula's hair. They're teenagers, in Azula's room of red and gold and silver.

"I've always liked your hair, 'Zula. It's so soft and full." 

Azula swears to herself that she's not blushing as Ty-Lee's fingers the nape of her neck. They lock eyes in the mirror. Ty-lee lifts her chin with fingers. Azula melts under the touch. Light brown meets cloudy grey. Azula's heart pounds like it does when she's competing at a tournament. 

She can't. Not now. Not _here._ Her eyes fearfully glance at the locked door.

"I-we shouldn't. He could be home any minute."

"We'll know." 

Azula really shouldn't. 

Ty-Lee's lips say otherwise. They're lightly coated with glittery lipgloss. It's scented cherry. Azula wonders if her lips tastes like that too. They curl up into a soft sugary smile.

Azula prays to god that her father isn't home as she connects their lips desperately. Ty-Lee giggles against her lips.)

Azula stumbles to the bathroom. She grips the sink under her until her knuckles turn bone-white. This is all her fault. She knew this but that didn't mean it didn't sting any less. She let Ty-Lee in, even when almost everything in her told her not to. She just wanted this one thing but Mother always said she was a wildfire, consuming everything in her path until there was nothing left. 

("You're a vampire. You take everything just because you can and suck people dry!" Ty-lee shouts in the middle of Azula's place. She can't remember what they're fighting about but she is going to fucking win. 

Azula rolls her eyes. Inside her heart is pounding and she wants to beg to Ty _that's she's sorry, she's so sorry, she doesn't know what's wrong with her._

She doesn't. Her instincts kick in. 

"At least, I'm good for something. You're so soft all the time. You're so sensitive. You can't even make up your mind about what you want to do for a living! I was better off fucking one of your sisters. At least they know when to shut the hell up." Azula waves off but her voice is icy cold. She doesn't mean it but she always falls back on being mean, on lashing out. It's the only thing that's worked to keep the hurt away. 

Ty-Lee leaves crying. This is not their first fight but it's gearing to be one of their last.)

Azula moves her hair back and peers into the mirror. 

A broken girl glares back, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed. Her hair is in disarray and just looking at it makes her skin crawl. It's too long and it sticks out and she has a cowlick and-

The feeling of hot tears makes her look away from her looking glass to the pink toothbrush. 

(Azula read the Art of War for the hundredth time as Ty-lee brushes her teeth, getting ready for bed. She's in Care Bear pajamas that make a smile tug at her lips. 

Ty-Lee is ranting on about how unfair her sister Lian is being. 

"-and it's like she doesn't even think she's part of the reason I ran away! She's so aggravating. She thinks just because she has a start-up business and a husband that she knows how the world works, can you believe that?!" 

Her ponytail swings with every sentence. 

"I could put Nair in her shampoo for you?" Azula offers. 

Her lover snorts loudly and spits in the sink. She put the pink toothbrush away and it makes a satisfying _clink_ against the holder.

"I'm serious. It would be so simple. I could drop something off, ask to use the bathroom, and mix it in." Azula protests, book long forgotten. She’s taking off her reading glasses to look up at Ty who has her hands on her hips. 

"Zu. That's still my sister."

Azula places her reading glasses on the nightstand.

"Would you do that to Zuko?" Ty-Lee presses jokingly. 

Azula quirks a brow as she snorts, she forgets that what she and Zuko have isn't normal. You're not supposed to actively aim to hurt your sibling. Fathers aren't supposed to make dog fights out of dinnertime. It's been beaten into them. Second Nature by now. Being with Ty-Lee is undoing that, her presence is pulling away a facade Azula worked so hard to thread. 

"What makes you think I haven't?"

"No! He said gum got stuck in his hair."

"I also did that to make sure he would wash his hair." 

"That's so mean!" Ty giggles, flopping on the bed. Azula shrugs. Such is life, such is Azula. 

"I'm mean." Azula deadpans. Ty-lee sits up and taps her nose softly. Her eyes gaze into Azula's and Azula feels her face heat up. 

"You're soft." She grins. Azula's eyes narrow as she tries to will away the pink in her cheeks. 

"I'm mean," Azula growls lunging at Ty making the teen squeal. She goes for the major weakness. 

Her ribs. 

Ty-lee tries to combat the tickling but Azula's too good. She has her both girlfriend's wrists in one hand while she tickles with the other. 

Ty kicks her legs, begging, "Azula-pl-please! Uncle! Uncle!"

"I don't see a fat old man here," Azula comments as the girl under her squirms. 

"You're mean! You're so mean, _the meanest_ , please! I'm sorry!" 

Azula hums over the loud squeaks and laughter, "You don't sound so earnest."

Ty nods as choking out pleas between giggles.

"I'll allow this lapse in judgment once," Azula says slowly before stopping her attacks. She ducks her head to plant kisses on the chubby cheeks as an apology, she was never good at those.

Ty-lee wraps her legs around her and rolls them. 

"Thank you, Princess, for being _so_ gracious." Ty-lee smiles, tears of laughter still on her face, before leaning in.)

Azula shuts her eyes tightly. Of course. Everyone always chooses to leave her in the end. Their mother, Iroh, Lu Ten, Mai, and now Ty-Lee. Her father was right. 

She shouldn't get things she knew she couldn't keep. 

But Ty-lee was so captivating. So open and warm and earnest. She has tried to fight it. _Really_ , she did, but the girl just kept coming back. Still as bubbly and pretty and pink. It was always too good to be true. Even in the darkness that seemed to hang over Azula, Ty-Lee always scared the cloudy skies away and brought out the light. 

She should have known it was only a matter of time before she got burned. 

Well, she'll show them. She'll show them all. She doesn't need anyone. They needed her. She'll destroy everything they tainted for her.

Finding the scissors and hunting down the clippers is easy enough. 

(Ty-Lee's fingers card through her hair as Azula lays on her stomach failing to read The Invisible Man. She hums at the soft petting and feeling Ty giggle silently.

They fit so well together, Azula had thought.) 

She yanks her hair into a mass you could a ponytail on the side and starts to hack at the raven locks. The sound makes her grin, despite the tears she feels pricking at her eyes, at how freeing it feels. The hair falls like feathers lightly fluttering to the ground. She wishes it would sink like a stone in water. Or burst into flames. 

("I've always loved your hair. Don't cut it!"

"It was just a thought, Ty.")

It's a jagged bob. Longer at the sides. Sloppy. Azula looks up. She's still crying, her lower lip quivering. She sees her mother in the pathetic look in her eyes and sees Zuko in the way her shoulders shake with silent tears. 

It's not enough. She still feel the pang of sadness and self-loathing. Azula snatches up the clippers like it's going to run away from her shaking hands. She plugs it in and The clippers roar to life and rumble like a rattlesnake. Azula was never one to back down so she takes it up to her ear, then stops. She glances at the mirror. The girl in the glass looks scared and unsure.

("I love you too." Azula confesses in her Junior year of high school, it feels so wrong to say the right thing, to say what she feels. She braces for rejection but there is none. Ty beams like the sun but brighter.)

She takes it to the middle part of her hair instead so she can't back out. The sensation of it is more soothing than a shoulder to cry will ever be. The clippers vibrate slightly against her scalp. Her head already feels lighter so she does another swipe at it. She doesn’t even flinch as it nicks her hairline. 

("I'll always love you, Azula. You don't have to say it back." Ty-lee says, at a sleepover when they're kids in middle school, her eyes soft and open as Mei mumbles in her sleep. Azula felt her heart burst at the seams. She's never been loved before.) 

She works her way to the outside, hair getting all over her neck and shirt. There are a couple of strands clinging to her eyelash and sticking to the tear tracks on her cheeks. She tastes the salt on her upper lip. Azula can't remember a year she cried so much. Crying was for _weaklings_ like Zuko. She was the stoic one. She was the take-no-shit play-no-games one. 

Well, she _was._

Azula rakes her growing nails over her freed scalp.

(Of all the fights they’ve had, their breakup was so...cold in comparison. Azula came home to Ty wringing her hands in the kitchen. Mei was outside in her car. The apartment looked emptier. They exchanged pleasantries. Then came the first blow. Ty-Lee was going back to University. They’ve done long-distance before. Azula congratulated her and went in for a hug but Ty-lee stopped her. 

‘I love you Azula. I really do but I can’t do this anymore.’ 

Those exact words were a rug being pulled under her feet. Azula saved face. 

‘Is this what you really want?’

Ty-Lee started to ramble. She didn’t want to do this. These things just happen. It was only a matter of time. They were so different. 

The words muddled into one message. 

**I don’t want _you_ anymore. **

Azula let her leave with a blank face. As soon as she heard the car drive off, she threw every chair, smashed every picture, and she screamed and cursed until she fell into sobbing on the floor when it didn’t help. When the pit in her stomach just made it worse. When she realized that she was the reason for all this.

Then Zuko came. 

‘It was for the best. It wasn’t your fault. These things just happen.’ 

He knew, he knew, he knew before her? Ty-Lee told him before her. She recoiled from his touch like he’d burned her. 

Mei knew, she helped Ty pack up, and now Zuko?

_Et tu, Brutus?_

She kicked him out. Slammed the door and sat on the floor as she stared at the pieces of her life ruined before her.)

Present Azula goes over every inch of her head until it’s only peach fuzz. The sink and floor are darkened by her hair. Her head feels lighter but her heart still feels dead. It’s freeing but there’s something missing. She sees her father in her brows. Oh, how she loathes that. He was the one who ruined her. He totaled Azula and then left her to fix it herself. He made her broken. Azula will have to make herself whole again. She tilts her head slightly. 

She can start now.

(They're slow-dancing, Ty's head resting on her shoulder and fingers intertwined as they sway to the music. A stupid ballad that's older than both of them combined. Ty-Lee’s always liked 80s music and ballads are no exceptions. 

Azula scoffs but it has no bite. 

“Don’t be like that. It’s a good song.” 

“Why dance to a sad song?”

“We need the sad in our life to make the happy times brighter. Plus, George Micheal sounds so good.” 

“I’ve got enough sad times to last another life.”

“And doesn’t that make _this_ all the sweeter?”

Azula hums, Ty-lee’s voice is slightly strained. Her shoulders are a tad too tight. Something’s wrong and her girlfriend is pretending it’s not. Is this still about the fight they had the other week? Azula thought they were past that.

“You okay?” Azula whispers. 

Ty-Lee laughs an octave too low. 

“Yeah, just tired, Can you do this one thing for me?”

“Anything,” Azula says too earnestly and Ty-Lee shuts her eyes. Then she puts the song on repeat.

“Sing it for me?”

Azula blinks, Ty’s eyes remind her of a wounded doe’s, big eyes but feeling small in the big big world. 

She starts, low and slow but matching every note.)

Azula cuts a slit in her brow and smiles. She doesn’t look like Zuko, her father, or her mother. 

Azula is a stranger to herself. 

And it feels so _good_ to gaze back into the unknown.

* * *

_So I'm never gonna dance again  
The way I danced with you _

_Now that you're gone_

_Now that you're gone_

_Now that you're gone_

_What I did that was so wrong?_

_So wrong that you had to leave me alone?_

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, you totally should comment and leave kudos so I know what you like and don't like. Constructive criticism and/or commentary is super helpful and appreciated! Thanks for reading!
> 
> KJ


End file.
